Base MCP：下一站，Agent支付的「应用层」战场

Yesterday, Base officially launched Base MCP. By connecting a Base Account to an AI Agent via Base MCP, users can use plain language to instruct the Agent to execute operations such as Swap, transfers, position tracking, and transaction history queries, just like chatting.

Players familiar with Base know that the current main narrative on the Base chain is AI, so this update from Base is not surprising to them. Some players even anticipate new mechanics similar to the Ethereum-based AI meme coin $SHIT from before, where they could use Base MCP to chat directly with an Agent to participate in on-chain new token launches.

However, if we step back from the perspective of an on-chain degen and look at it from the competitive angle of Agent-to-Agent payments, we might find a new answer to why AI has become Base's main narrative.

The Rapidly Evolving Agent Payment Landscape

Let's turn the clock back to September 2024. Back then, to enable an AI Agent to make a payment, humans had essentially only one option: using browser automation tools (like Playwright, Selenium, or other headless browsers) to make the AI Agent simulate human actions and complete the checkout process on a webpage.

Because this required providing payment credentials (such as the full credit/debit card number, CVV, expiration date) directly to the AI Agent, this sole option came with significant security risks.

By May 2025, Coinbase introduced x402, providing AI Agents with a crypto wallet and solving this problem in a crypto-native way. But Coinbase wasn't the only one recognizing this potential market, nor is the crypto-native approach the only solution. In 2025, Google launched AP2, allowing users to authorize spending power to Agents. Visa expanded its existing card payment channels, launching Visa Intelligent Commerce, which doesn't provide Agents with sensitive information like credit card numbers or CVVs but instead offers specific, restricted tokens for the Agent to complete payments.

Today, x402 has processed 176 million transactions from AI Agents, with a total transaction volume exceeding $70 million. While this amount may seem modest, neither Coinbase nor traditional giants are underestimating the competition in this emerging payment frontier:

- On January 22, 2026, Capital One, the sixth-largest bank in the US with $470 billion in assets, $330 billion in deposits, and the third-largest credit card issuer nationally, announced the acquisition of Brex for $5.15 billion to enhance its AI payment capabilities.

- In March 2026, Mastercard acquired stablecoin infrastructure company BVNK for $1.8 billion.

- In February 2025, Stripe acquired stablecoin payment platform Bridge for $1.1 billion.

While not explicitly stated, these acquisitions of stablecoin-related companies are clearly aimed at preparing for the upcoming era of Agent payments. Stablecoins are, after all, crucial for this payment paradigm.

Why Are Stablecoins Critical for Agent Payments?

According to data from Keyrock, the median transaction amount for Agent transactions processed on x402 so far is between $0.01 and $0.10, with 76% of transactions being under $0.30.

$0.30 represents the most common fixed fee per transaction in the US and most major markets. This fee acts as a barrier, making micropayments under $1 highly uneconomical. For example, an API call costing $0.03 would incur a fee 10 times its value. If an Agent were to use a credit card, the accumulated costs would be prohibitively high.

Blockchain elegantly solves this problem. On Base, the transaction settlement cost is $0.0001. With this tremendous advantage, stablecoins almost naturally win the competition against traditional payment giants in the Agent payment space.

Of the 176 million Agent transactions already processed on x402, 98.6% were settled in USDC. Given the close relationship between Coinbase and Circle, it's safe to say Coinbase is also a major winner on the settlement layer.

However, the settlement layer is just one piece of the Agent payment puzzle. In the race to solve Agent payments through crypto-native solutions, Coinbase has a formidable opponent—Stripe.

The Challenge from Stripe

In March of this year, Stripe launched the Agent payment protocol MPP, bringing its architecture for Agent payments nearly on par with Coinbase.

- On the settlement layer: Coinbase has Base, Stripe has Tempo

- On the wallet layer: Coinbase has Agent Wallet, Stripe has Privy

- On the routing layer: Coinbase has built-in routing infrastructure, Stripe has Bridge, which it acquired for $1.1 billion

- On the payment protocol layer: Coinbase has x402, Stripe has MPP

Now, let's return to the Base MCP mentioned at the beginning of this article. With both competitors now possessing these four layers of infrastructure, the next battleground is naturally the application layer.

This is the core reason AI has become Base's main narrative—Base needs to ensure that AI (at least, the crypto-related AI) happens *on* Base. This isn't actually about providing tools for degen traders on the Base chain, but rather about broadening the scope of Agent payment scenarios, enabling more Agents to execute more transactions for more applications, thereby securing its leading position in the Agent payment track.

Once a dominant scale advantage is established, Coinbase will be in an even stronger position to win big when Agent payments enter the commercial sector.

Viewing the launch of Base MCP from this perspective, it becomes clear that this is just a small step in Coinbase's vast ambition.